\u201cYou must \u2018remember what Amalek has done to you,\u201d Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admonished on October 28, announcing the \u201csecond phase,\u201d a ground invasion, of Israel\u2019s war in Gaza.<\/p>\n
Amalek, in the\u00a0Tanakh\u00a0(Hebrew Bible), is a nation that ambushed\u00a0the Israelites making their way to the Promised Land. Following the attack, which they were able to beat back, God instructed that they must never forget and must wage an eternal war until no trace of Amalek\u2019s existence remains. Generations later, King Saul killed all but the Amalekite king, whose descendent, Haman, generations after that, in the story of Purim, plotted to kill all the Jews in Persia.<\/p>\n
Netanyahu is notoriously secular in his private life. But, ever the shrewd politician, scripture is his language of choice to sell his war to Jewish supremacists in Israel and right-wing Evangelicals in the U.S.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The victims of Hamas\u2019 vile October 7 attack come from what is referred to as the \u201cGaza envelope.\u201d Heavy with\u00a0kibbutzim (intentional collectives, traditionally based around agriculture), its\u00a0residents<\/a>\u00a0are known for being secular and\u00a0left-leaning.<\/p>\n Asked if losing his parents in Hamas\u2019s terror attack had affected his political views, Maoz Inon,\u00a0pleaded<\/a>\u00a0not for revenge but a reassessment of basing security \u201con military might.\u201d<\/p>\n Likewise, Yotam Kipnis in\u00a0eulogizing for his father<\/a>, said \u201cWe will not stay silent while the cannons roar, and we won\u2019t forget that Dad loved peace. He wasn\u2019t willing to serve in the territories. Do not write my father\u2019s name on a missile, he wouldn\u2019t have wanted that.\u201d<\/p>\n Tom Godo, whose son lived and died in Kibbutz Kissufim,\u00a0blamed the Netanyahu administration<\/a>: \u201cThe fingers that pulled the trigger and murdered, the hands that held the knives that stabbed and beheaded and slashed were the loyal and determined emissaries of the accursed, messianic and corrupt government [of Israel].\u201d<\/p>\n Even after spending 16 hostages in Gaza, eighty-five-year-old peace activist\u00a0Yocheved Lifshitz<\/a>\u00a0retained her belief in reconciliation. Upon being transferred to the Red Cross, she took the hand of her Hamas handler and bade him \u201cShalom,\u201d (peace).<\/p>\n It\u2019s not the families of those murdered on October 7, nor the families of the hostages who have been sleeping in tents outside the military headquarters in Tel Aviv\u00a0demanding<\/a>\u00a0all Palestinian political prisoners be released in exchange for their loved ones Netanyahu is invoking Amalek to, but the ideological descendants of Kach.<\/p>\n The religious-nationalist\u00a0Kach party<\/a>\u00a0was founded in 1971 by Brooklyn-born Rabbi Meir Kahane who argued for \u201cthe immediate transfer of the Arabs,\u201d whom he referred to as \u201cdogs.\u201d In 1984, the one time his party secured a single seat in the Knesset, Kahane introduced legislation to ban all Jewish-Gentile marriages and sexual relations and revoke the Israeli citizenship of non-Jews.<\/p>\n The Kach party was so violently racist that it was\u00a0prohibited<\/a>\u00a0from running in Israel\u2019s next election, banned entirely in 1994, and defined as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.<\/p>\n In\u00a0what could be perceived as another iteration of Amalek, in 2019, Kahane follower Itamar Ben Gvir formed the Jewish Power party, an ideological offshoot of Kach. Merging with other far-right fundamentalist parties to form\u00a0Religious Zionism<\/a>,\u00a0in 2022, they won the third-largest share of Israel\u2019s parliament seats.\u00a0This is the audience Netanyahu is addressing, but not only them.<\/p>\n On October 8, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ), which\u00a0claims<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0represent millions, sent out an email stating that Hamas\u2019 attack, \u201cwas not launched due to grievances over the Israeli \u2018occupation\u2019 or any real dangers to the al-Aqsa mosque. Rather, it was driven by the ancient \u201cSpirit of Amalek.\u201d<\/p>\n On October 24, Christians United for Israel, which boasts a membership of over 10 million, raised $25 million in\u00a0a single night<\/a>\u00a0in support of Israel (they raised and donated\u00a0 $100 million over the week).\u00a0Standing beside CUFI\u2019s Pastor John Hagee, who in 2008\u00a0referred<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0Hitler as a \u201chunter\u201d sent by God \u201cto help Jews reach the promised land,\u201d was Israeli Ambassador to Israel Gilan Erdad.<\/p>\n Given their\u00a0belief<\/a>\u00a0that when enough Jews have populated their modern state, the apocalypse will come, and\u00a0\u201ca sea of [Jewish and Muslim] human blood<\/a>” will fill the land, it\u2019s hard to think of Evangelical Zionist support for Israel as a heartfelt commitment to the protection of the Jewish people. Despite that,\u00a0amid\u00a0declining<\/a>\u00a0Jewish-American support for Israel, especially among young Jews, Israel has for years been\u00a0courting<\/a>\u00a0Evangelical support. However,\u00a0polls<\/a>\u00a0are finding the support of young Evangelicals is also rapidly declining, dropping from 75% to 34% between 2018 and 2021.<\/p>\n Religious nationalism may be soaring in Israel, but that\u2019s not the trend in America. Some people of faith, like\u00a0Adam Strater<\/a>,\u00a0the senior Jewish educator for Georgia Hillels, are even reclaiming the story of Amalek as a model for Jews to reject \u201cthe evil impulse,\u201d described in the Zohar (3:160a) and \u201cmake the moral choice to reorient the tradition towards a shared sense of solidarity, and ultimately, liberation.\u201d Given the rapidly climbing toll of death in Gaza \u2013 over 9,000 people killed already \u2013 these changes could not be more welcome or come soon enough.<\/p>\n